


Potnia in Amber

by Goethicite



Category: Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Genre: Bigotry & Prejudice, Family Feels, Gen, Loss of Parent(s), Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-15
Updated: 2015-02-15
Packaged: 2018-03-13 02:23:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3364223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goethicite/pseuds/Goethicite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jupiter finds a light in Stinger's attic, and maybe she and Kiza can make this family work.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Potnia in Amber

Jupiter wiped the sweat off her forehead. The Midwestern summer humidity was oppressive in the attic of Stinger's house. Even with the windows knocked out, there was no breeze stirring the wet heat that seemed to be slowly stewing Jupiter alive. Even the bees were feeling it, moving lazily, bobbing through the air like it was molasses. The sickeningly sweet smell of warm honey permeated everything underlain by the tang of beeswax.

Sighing, Jupiter kneeled down to the second to last metal crate. She'd volunteered to help clean out the attic. So Stinger and Kiza could turn the storage room downstairs into a bedroom for Caine. They had cleared out most of the Earth accruements Stinger had collected, but he'd asked her to check the metal crates to sort the personal belongings from spare parts.

Typing the code into the keypad on the side, Jupiter leaned back as the crate hissed open. She popped the lid and raised an eyebrow. While the other crates had mostly been jumbles of wires and shiny bits of metal, this was full of sheafs and viewing pads. Shining dimly beneath the stack, a light was moving. Jupiter moved the stacks out of the way and found a circular disc the size of a half-dollar. It was flickering blue, and there was a shadow above it. Jupiter had never seen this kind of device before, but she'd gotten good at inferring their function from the things she did know about. It looked like some kind of projector, and all view pads and sheaf-readers seemed to be charged by sunlight.

So she took the disc and put it on the windowsill in the sunshine as she opened the last crate. The final crate was clothes. So Jupiter resealed it and left it. When she looked up, the disc had finished re-charging. It was some kind of holographic projector. A smiling woman with bright blue hair spun slowly above the disc. In her arms was a baby. The woman was seated on an ornate wooden chair. Her clothes were too plain for royalty, a long, tunic-like shirt in white and tight, black pants, but she looked completely human except for the bionics over one eye. Her blue braid was draped over her shoulder so the baby could mouth the beaded closure at the end. Bees floated around them, a moment in time preserved forever.

"Oh," Jupiter breathed as she looked at the woman who had to be Kiza's mother. "Oh, wow." Kiza's mother had jade green eyes like her daughter, but her face was pointed and darker. Kiza looked more like her father and seemed to have his coloring as well, but her eyes and her smile were her mother's.

"Your majesty," Stinger said absently opening the door, "have you seen…" He trailed off as he saw the image on the windowsill. "Oh…" He walked forward almost in a trance, to stand in front of the window.

Jupiter swallowed, "She's Kiza's mother, your wife, isn't she?"

Stinger nodded, clearing his throat and looking away. "The mother of my child, but, no, not my wife, majesty." He reached out and stopped the image from turning. The woman was facing him as she smiled. "She loved bees," he said softly. "There were pheromones in all of Kiza's blankets so they wouldn't sting her."

"This is your splicer?" Jupiter asked, startled.

"Yes," Stinger replied sadly. "It's not like you think though, majesty. She was my splicer, but she didn't make me. Not like Caine's splicer made him." His thumb traced the air next to the woman's face. "There's two ways to make a genome engineered soldier, majesty. You can change them or you can make them. Caine was made. I was altered."

Jupiter took a moment to think through the implications, before guessing. "You were born human."

Stinger nodded, "More or less. Not royal, you understand, and I've got a bit of non-human and not engineered in me. That's why I joined the Legion. My genes were flawed. I was going to get sick. The Legion paid to have me recoded and spliced." He let the image go, and the woman began to slowly spin again. "There's a reason most splices are made not altered. The process is excruciating. The morality rate is high. I was young and strong though, but, Merciful Black, Jupe, it hurt." He inhaled wetly. "She used to administer the treatment then hold my hand and cry for me. Since I wouldn't. No matter how much it hurt." His fingers curled into a loose fist.

"Kiza's also human more or less," Jupiter said, though she was really asking.

"Yes," Stinger agreed. "She was conceived before the splice was completed. Her mother made sure of that. Spliced genes aren't stable enough to produce healthy offspring. Most of those born engineered, like Caine, are either designed to be sterile or sterilized immediately after decanting." He tipped his head at the image. "She sterilized me after the splicing took for the same reason. We didn't want to risk it. But the damage was already done with Kiza. The splice fixed my genes, but Kiza got the bug in the code from me. Her mother was going to fix it when she grew up."

Jupiter hugged Stinger from behind, pressing her face into his back. He patted her hands absently. "Where is she, Sting?" Jupiter asked around the lump in her throat. "Sorry, I mean, I just… Can I get her back for you?"

Stinger laughed. It wasn't mean, but it wasn't happy. "No majesty. Some royals had my woman killed, because she wouldn't play their game. They were one the wrong side of the war though. Caine and I took care of it." He picked up the disc and tapped the center. The woman disappeared. "It's been a very long time since I put these away. I know Kiza wanted to see them again. Thank you for finding these, majesty."

"Can I ask one more question?" Jupiter said, stepping back so they could face each other. Stinger dipped his head. "You don't have to answer, but is it unusual to have a child with someone who isn't your spouse?"

"No. But a human loving a splice, even one that was human once, is considered distasteful. Marriage would have drawn too much attention to us. Then she was dead, and her estate defaulted to her business partners since all I had to prove what I meant to her was our daughter." Stinger rolled the disc between his palms. He looked Jupiter straight in the eye. "If you stay with Caine, your majesty, you're going to have to deal with it too. She was damned for having my child, and she was only a splicer."

Jupiter looked down at the seal tattooed on her wrist, tilting it back and forth. "It was worth it to her, or she wouldn't have," Jupiter said certainly. "I may be royalty, but I'm still Jupiter Jones, Stinger. I love Caine Wise. And I love you and Kiza. Fuck anyone who can't handle that."

Stinger grinned. "You would have liked her, majesty. She used to spit in people's drinks when they insulted me or Caine. Got her in trouble more than once. I got very good at helping her punch her way out of it. Caine's getting there too, I think." He tossed the disc in the air and caught it. "We'll start bringing up boxes since you're finished up here."

"Sounds good," Jupiter said, relaxing as the tension she hadn't even realized was there vanished from the room.

They went downstairs together. Kiza was in the kitchen slathering sweet-smelling barbeque sauce on enough meat to feed a small army. She grinned Jupiter, and Jupiter bit back a laugh. The were brown smudges of sauce on the girl's forehead and cheek where she'd been wiping away sweat. "Most of this is for your lad," Kiza said, scolding and laughing at the same time. "Hey, dad."

Stinger wandered over and dropped a kiss on top of Kiza's head. "Go ahead and wash your hands, sweetheart. Her majesty found some things for you in the attic."

Kiza glanced at Jupiter, raising her eyebrow in question as she went to the sink to clean her hands. Jupiter shrugged in reply. With freshly scrubbed hands, Kiza accepted the disc from her father. "Who is it?" she asked, startled. Stinger patted her arm. Kiza hit the button in the middle and gasped as the woman's image appeared. "Mum," Kiza breathed out. "Oh, Dad." She reached out to stop the image from spinning, staring at her mother's face.

Stinger wrapped his daughter in a hug as she examined the projection. "It was your first birthday," he said quietly. "I got leave to come see the two of you. You were growing up so fast. So she had a high quality pocket disc made for me and updated it on each of your birthdays."

Nodding, Kiza slid her finger over the edge of the disc. The image molded smoothly into a new one. Still the woman, now with purple hair and a grey shirt, sitting in the chair with a blond toddler on her lap. There were three more images. In every picture there were bees. In the last one, Kiza, past toddler-hood, was laughing on her mother's lap, petting a bumblebee cupped in her mother's hand with one finger. Sprawled out at the woman's feet was Caine, dressed in the same loose style of tunic as the woman and Kiza. His head rested against the woman's knee, smiling bright and innocent up at the child. The woman's hand was resting maternally on the back of his neck.

Jupiter closed her eyes to hide the glassiness in them. Kiza had tears rolling down her cheeks. Five space years, five Earth years. Either way not enough time to have with your mother. From the kitchen door there was a wounded whine. Caine was looking at the projected image too, longing, sad noises rumbling out of his throat.

"Come on," Stinger ordered, raising a hand to invite Caine closer. "I know you haven't seen her in a long time." Caine loped forward cautiously. He reached out too and touched the projection. The light rippled where the tip of his finger made contact. "I know you miss her too," Stinger said gently. Caine nodded. The three of them just breathed together, looking at the woman they'd loved so dearly smiling.

Then Kiza said, "It's my birthday next week. We should take an image for the disc today, a new family photo."

It was a bit of a disaster. Cold water had to be splashed on sweaty and tearstained faces. Apparently, the imager for the disc as an entirely different unit that had to be located. Then Caine had to do some minor repairs on the imager since the bits on the bottom that made it float were broken. They managed though.

The imager circled them, scanning them from all sides and sending the scan back to the disc. Kiza and Jupiter had their arms around each other, sisters despite everything. Stinger stood behind them with a hand on both their shoulders, looking old and tired but proud. Caine sat on the floor between the Kiza and Jupiter's legs with his head resting on Jupiter's knee and his hand covering the one Kiza had on his shoulder. The imager beeped when it was done.

The four of them untangled themselves and hurried over to see the image pop up from the disc. It wasn't the most attractive image. Jupiter had sweated off all her makeup, and Kiza was still blotchy from crying. The boys were dressed in stained, tattered work clothes. But there were bees floating around the four of them. And they were smiling.

**Author's Note:**

> I've seen the movie twice and still never caught the name of Stinger's splicer. If anyone knows it, please tell me.
> 
> A big part of this story comes from the difference in how Stinger talked about his splicer (her name, she liked bees) than how he talked about Caine's splicer ('sold him to the Legion at a loss').


End file.
